There have been quite a few conversations happening about how a distrust in Apple is causing lower adoption rates in iOS8. John Gruber and Guy English talked at length about it on John's podcast, The Talk Show. True, there was a widely publicized update shortly after iOS8 was introduced that bricked many phones before it was caught and pulled from the Apple servers, and there were many folks that were rather displeased with the major interface changes a year ago that were introduced with iOS 7.

Even with these other issues, I think the problem has more to do with the increasing size of updates and the stagnation of Storage on iOS devices. Anecdotally, what I'm finding among my non-early adopter friends is an inability to update due to a lack of available storage space. Even those that don't have large numbers of apps are finding that the photos, videos and multi-media content on their phones are the main issue.

While the message has been consistent among folks doing reviews in the Apple tech community that 16gb is too small in 2014, we're stuck with it for another year- and quite simply, this is the phone/iPad that most non tech folks (the vast majority) will end up with. For this very reason, I moved to the 64gb model this year.

Until then, if you have an iPhone 5 or 5s, I would advise that you update for security and feature reasons. If you are using a 4, I would advise against it. My daughter's was pretty sluggish with it before we traded it in to AT&T. The 4S will run iOS8 about the same as iOS7. Both of my boys have been running it since the day it was released with no problems. Here is a little help to make it happen even if your phone is full of photos, podcasts and playlists.

Plug it in

I know this seems counterintuitive to what you've heard and gotten used to over the last couple years, but you can sitll plug your phone into your computer and update your software in iTunes. Part of the reason that the OS update requires so much space is that when you update over the air, the new software has to be downloaded to your phone before it can replace the existing OS. When you plug into the computer, the new OS is downloaded to your computer's hard drive first and then installed on your device over the lightning cable. Viola! No need for you to delete anything.

I was able to update 2 different iPhones that had less than 500mb available this way the first day that iOS was available.

Get all that Content off your Phone

Ok, so this one requires plugging in your device too, but this is a better long term solution and wil also make sure that you have all your photos on your computer where they aren't succeptible to an accidental swim in the toilet. (Little plug here though- You do have a backup of the computer don't you?) The first step is determining if you really want, or need to keep some photos on your phone. Are the important ones already online somewhere where it's easy to get to them or do you need them to be in your camera roll? Do you already have Photostream turned on? If you do, the last 1000 photos you took with your device have already been uploaded to your iCloud account.

If you don't already import photos from your phone, it's actually pretty easy. If you are using a Mac, iPhoto is probably your best option and will likely just open automatically when you plug your phone in. Once you are finished loading the photos, you can choose to delete them from your device.

If you're using a PC, you can use any photo management application or you can just follow the prompts that appear on your desktop in the Autoplay dialog box once you plug the phone in.

But I want All the Photos On My Phone!

I know the second option may not sit well with those of you who just want to always have all the photos you took with your phone, on your phone. There are a couple ways you can accomplish this and not run out of space on your phone.

Buy an iPhone with more capacity.

Buy an iPhone with more capacity.

Simply put, if you want them to always be on your phone, this is the only always-on, binary way to do it.

There are a couple ways to auto upload and keep all of your photos accessible over the web, even if you delete them from your device. The caveat is that is- you won't have access when you are offline. I'll write a separate post about that.

I hope this helps you keep things up to date and I'm happy to help out if you have any other questions.